"syntax error, unexpected ASTERISK" on a comment line with just asterisk

[bstpierre]

I recently upgraded an installation from beancount 2.0rc1 on 2.3.5 and several of my files started getting syntax error, unexpected ASTERISK from bean-check test.bean. (With python 3.9 on debian.)

Line 2 gets the error, it is just an asterisk on a line by itself.

Line 6 does NOT get the error, it is an asterisk followed by a space.

test.bean:

* this is a comment
*
* The line above is part of a commented-series of lines, it does not have a
* trailing space. The line below has a trailing space.
* 

2022-01-01 open Assets:Cash USD
2022-01-01 open Expenses:Misc USD

2022-01-02 * "blah"
    Assets:Cash   -1.00 USD
    Expenses:Misc  1.00 USD

The workaround appears to be to replace a lone asterisk on a line with asterisk+space (:%s/^\*$/* /) -- or delete these lines.

I created a python 3.9 venv to test, and it appears that this change occurred between 2.3.2 and 2.3.3.

[dnicolodi]

This works as intended. Comments in Beancount are introduced by a semicolon ; or an hash # character. The asterisk * is allowed only for org-mode-style sectioning headers.

[bstpierre]

According to the documentation, # is not a comment character -- ; is the only comment character, except for other characters that work as comment characters:

Any line that does not begin as a valid Beancount syntax directive (e.g. with a date) is silently ignored.

While experimenting with various things that may or may not be treated as comments across the 2.0/2.3.3 version boundary, I found that this file would parse as valid in 2.0 but not in 2.3.3:

  ; this is an indented comment, which is valid in 2.0 but a syntax error in 2.3.3

2022-01-01 open Assets:Cash USD
2022-01-01 open Expenses:Misc USD

2022-01-02 * "blah"
    Assets:Cash   -1.00 USD
    Expenses:Misc  1.00 USD

This yields the error message: test.bean:1: syntax error, unexpected INDENT. This contradicts the documentation:

Any text on a line after the character “;” is ignored

Note that replacing the semicolon with a hash on line 1 of that file becomes a syntax error (unexpected HASH) in both 2.0 and 2.3.3.

I don't really expect these issues to get fixed, but I thought it might save someone a few minutes if they search for this error message.

Though I suppose you could consider this as a documentation error about what is considered valid syntax.